The Chubasco Channel
Chubasco Channel Release Party June 24
To complement the local celebration of Día de San Juan and the coming of the monsoons, on June 24th, 2022, Tucson Water will host a site-specific sound installation along the Santa Cruz River underneath the Cushing St. Bridge. Check out a map here(PDF, 5MB). The event will feature live mixing by DJ DirtyVerbs and the premiere of the Monsoon Mixtape. The riverbed and nearby areas will be activated with projections, creating an immersive experience to celebrate water in the desert. The event begins at dusk.
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Monsoon Mixtape 2022 Drops Today!
June 17, 2022
The Monsoon Mixtape, presented by Tucson Water, is a series of songs by Tucson musicians that celebrate our summer rains. Commissioned by Tucson Water artist-in-residence Alex! Jimenez, each artist was given access to an online library of field recordings made by Jimenez, Logan Phillips, Enrique Garcia Naranjo, and members of the community. The musicians then incorporated these sounds from the 2021 monsoon season into their own original compositions.
Chubasco Channel
May 21, 2022
Tucson Water presents a monsoon soundscape by artist-in-residence Alex! Jimenez, assembled and composed by Logan Phillips. The Chubasco Channel is entirely built using field recordings made by Jimenez, Phillips, Enrique Garcia Naranjo, and members of the community in the Tucson area during the very active 2021 monsoon season. Illustration by Alex! Jimenez, animation by Alex! Jimenez and Logan Phillips.
The Chubasco Channel is an audio project created by artist Alex! Jimenez in the summer of 2021. As a part of her work with Tucson Water and the US Water Alliance, she asked the community of Tucson to record 3-minute samples of monsoon rains. In addition to community submissions, Alex and two other artists, Logan Phillips and Enrique Navarro, recorded monsoon storms and the sounds of water in Tucson during the summer monsoon season.
The Chubasco Channel is a long-format soundscape of Tucson rains for all to enjoy no matter the weather or time of year and will be available on YouTube. Climate change is affecting our yearly rainfall and this library of rain sounds will capture the rain we have now and allow others to experience rain in our prolonged periods of drought.
After the launch of the Chubasco Channel, a community library of audio samples will be available for sound artists and musicians to continue to pull from and create original works inspired by our local monsoons.
To kick this process off, this year artists Tucson Water, Alex! Jimenez, and Logan Phillips commissioned six local musicians to create original tracks using the Chubasco Channel Audio Library. The tracks created will be a part of the 2022 Monsoon Mixtape, available after the release party on June 24th.
June 2021
Chubasco Channel and Monsoon Memories
Tucson Water and artist Alex! Jimenez are asking you to join their community wide participatory audio project.
This summer, capture the sounds of a Tucson monsoon/chubasco and contribute to an audio archive of the unique tropical storms that visit us each year. A chubasco is a particularly violent storm with thunder and lightning that drops water in a deluge. Pause from your busy life and record a 3 minute sample of the chubasco speaking. Audio submitted will be collected into a Chubasco Channel on YouTube. There, the public can listen to Tucson monsoon sounds at their leisure. To hear a sample recording click here (this will open a new window).
As a community we can share in our experience of a storm, even if all your neighborhood experiences is the wind and thunder of a storm that passes you by, or the full on shower of a chubasco downpour. All qualities of the monsoon are encouraged to be captured. In between the cracks of thunder you might capture traffic, birds, dogs barking, car alarms and a whole host of urban sounds that our brains tune out. This community wide project encourages Tucsonans to relate to water through our experience of a monsoon. It furthers the concept of “one water”, that the rain pattering on our roof becomes a part of our watershed through stormwater recapture or by simply sustaining the life of a tree in the yard. We are connected by our experience of the rain. This archive will serve as a record of the rain activity in Tucson as heard by the community. By archiving the sounds of the monsoons we must consider the historical changes in the frequency and intensity of our seasonal rains. Due to climate change and the effects of urban heat, Tucson rains have changed significantly in the past thirty years. The Chubasco Channel will not only serve to archive the monsoon activities, but it will allow Tucsonans to experience a rainshower in our dry months.